Chapter III: Part 3

In the old days, when a man died intestate, leaving no record of his debts, a creditor might establish a claim by going with the Bishop to the grave of the dead man at midnight, stretching himself on it with face towards heaven and a Bible on his breast, and then saying solemnly, "I swear that So-and-so, who lies buried here, died in my debt by so much." After that the debt was allowed. What warning the Bishop first pronounced I do not know, but the scene is a vivid one, even if we think of the creditor as swearing truly, and a startling and terrible one if we think of him as about to swear to what is false. The dark night, the dark figures moving in it, the churchyard, the debtor's grave, the sham creditor, who had been loud in his protests under the light of the inn of the village, now quaking and trembling as the Bishop's warning comes out of the gloom, then stammering, and breaking down, and finally, with ghostly visions of a dead hand clutching at him from the grave, starting up, shrieking, and flying away. It is a nightmare. Let us not remember it when the candles are put out.

This ordeal was in force until the seventeenth century, but Bishop Wilson judged it un-Christian, and never practised it. The old Roman canon law of Purgation, a similar ordeal, he used not rarely. It was designed to meet cases of slander in which there was no direct and positive evidence. If a good woman had been accused of unchastity in that vague way of rumour which is always more damaging and devilish than open accusation, she might of her own free choice, or by compulsion of the Bishop, put to silence her false accusers by appearing in church, with witnesses ready to take oath that they believed her, and there swearing at the altar that common fame and suspicion had wronged her. If a man doubted her word he had to challenge it, or keep silence for ever after. The severest censures of the Church were passed upon those who dared to repeat an unproved accusation after the oaths of Purgation and Compurgation had been taken unchallenged. It is a fine, honest ordeal, very old, good for the right, only bad for the wrong, giving strength to the weak and humbling the mighty. But it would be folly and mummery in our day. The Church has lost its powers over life and limb, and no one capable of defaming a pure woman would care a brass penny about the Church's excommunication. Yet a woman's good name is the silver thread that runs through the pearl chain of her virtues. Pity that nowadays it can be so easily snapped. Conversation at five o'clock tea is enough to do that. The ordeal of compulsory Purgation was abolished in Man as late as 1737.

THE HERRING FISHERY

Bishop Wilson began, or revived, a form of service which was so beautiful, so picturesque, and withal so Manx that I regret the loss of scarce any custom so much as the discontinuance of this one. It was the fishermen's service on the shore at the beginning of the herring-season. But in order to appreciate it you must first know something of the herring fishing itself. It is the chief industry of the island. Half the population is connected with it in some way. A great proportion of the men of the humbler classes are half seamen, half landsmen, tilling their little crofts in the spring and autumn, and going out with the herring boats in summer. The herring is the national fish. The Manxman swears by its flavour. The deemsters, as we have seen, literally swear by its backbone. Potatoes and herrings constitute a common dish of the country people. They are ready for it at any hour of the day or night. I have had it for dinner, I have taken it for supper, I have seen it for tea, and even known it for breakfast. It is served without ceremony. In the middle of the table two great crocks, one of potatoes boiled in their jackets, the other of herrings fresh or salted; a plate and a bowl of new milk at every seat, and lumps of salt here and there. To be a Manxman you must eat Manx herrings; there is a story that to transform himself into a Manxman one of the Dukes of Athol ate twenty-four of them at breakfast, a herring for every member of his House of Keys.

The Manx herring fishery is interesting and very picturesque. You know that the herrings come from northern latitudes, Towards mid-winter a vast colony of them set out from the arctic seas, closely pursued by innumerable sea-fowl, which deal death among the little emigrants. They move in two divisions, one westward towards the coasts of America, the other eastward in the direction of Europe. They reach the Shetlands in April and the Isle of Man about June. The herring is fished at night. To be out with the herring boats is a glorious experience on a calm night. You have set sail with the fleet of herring boats about sun-down, and you are running before a light breeze through the dusk. The sea-gulls are skimming about the brown sails of your boat. They know what you are going to do, and have come to help you, Presently you come upon a flight of them wheeling and diving in the gathering darkness. Then you know that you have lit on the herring shoal. The boat is brought head to the wind and left to drift. By this time the stars are out, perhaps the moon also--though too much moon is not good for the fishing--and you can just descry the dim outline of the land against the dark blue of the sky.

Luminous patches of phosphorescent light begin to move in the water, "The mar-fire's rising," say the fishermen, the herring are stirring. "Let's make a shot; up with the gear," cries the skipper, and nets are hauled from below, passed over the bank-board, and paid out into the sea--a solid wall of meshes, floating upright, nine feet deep and a quarter of a mile long. It is a calm, clear night, just light enough to see the buoys on the back of the first net. The lamp is fixed on the mitch-board. All is silence, only the steady plash, plash, plash of the slow waters on the boat's side; no singing among the men, no chaff, no laughter, all quiet aboard, for the fishermen believe that the fish can hear; all quiet around, where the deep black of the watery pavement is brightened by the reflection of stars. Then out of the white phosphorescent patches come minute points of silver and countless faint popping sounds, The herrings are at play about the nets. You see them in numbers exceeding imagination, shoals on shoals. "Pull up now, there's a heavy strike," cries the skipper, and the nets are hauled up, and come in white and moving--a solid block of fish, cheep, cheep, cheeping like birds in the early morning. At the grey of dawn the boats begin to run for home, and the sun is shining as the fleet makes the harbour. Men and women are waiting there to buy the night's catch. The quay is full of them, bustling, shouting, laughing, quarrelling, counting the herrings, and so forth.

THE FISHERMEN'S SERVICE

Such is the herring fishery of Man. Bishop Wilson knew how bitter a thing it could be if this industry failed the island even for a single season. So, with absolute belief in the Divine government of the world, he wrote a Service to be held on the first day of the herring season, asking for God's blessing on the harvest of the sea. The scene of that service must have been wondrously beautiful and impressive. Why does not some great painter paint it? Let me, by the less effectual vehicle of words, attempt to realise what it must have been.

The place of it was Peel bay, a wide stretch of beach, with a gentle slope to the left, dotted over with grey houses; the little town farther on, with its nooks and corners, its blind alleys and dark lanes, its narrow, crabbed, crooked streets. Behind this the old pier and the herring boats rocking in the harbour, with their brown sails half set, waiting for the top of the tide. In the distance the broad breast of Contrary Head, and, a musket-shot outside of it, the little rocky islet whereon stand the stately ruins of the noble old Peel Castle. The beach is dotted over with people--old men, in their curranes and undyed stockings, leaning on their sticks; children playing on the shingle; young women in groups, dressed in sickle-shaped white sun-bonnets, and with petticoats tucked up; old women in long blue homespun cloaks. But these are only the background of the human picture. In the centre of it is a wide circle of fishermen, men and boys, of all sizes and sorts, from the old Admiral of the herring fleet to the lad that helps the cook--rude figures in blue and with great sea-boots. They are on their knees on the sand, with their knitted caps at their rusty faces, and in the middle of them, standing in an old broken boat, is the Bishop himself, bareheaded, white-headed, with upturned face praying for the fishing season that is about to begin. The June day is sweet and beautiful, and the sun is going down behind the castle. Some sea-gulls are disporting on the rock outside, and, save for their jabbering cries, and the boom of the sea from the red horizon, and the gentle plash of the wavelets on the pebbles of the shore, nothing is heard but the slow tones of the Bishop and the fishermen's deep _Amen_. Such was Bishop Wilson's fishermen's service. It is gone; more's the pity.

SOME OLD LAWS

The spiritual laws of Man were no dead letters when Bishop Wilson presided over its spiritual courts. He was good to illegitimate children, making them legitimate if their parents married within two years of their birth, and often putting them on the same level with their less injured brothers and sisters where inheritance was in question. But he was unmerciful to the parents themselves. There is one story of his treatment of a woman which passes all others in its tyranny. It is, perhaps, the only deep stain on his character. I thank God that it can never have come to the ears of Victor Hugo. Told as Hugo would have told it, surely it must have blasted for ever the name of a good man. It is the dark story of Katherine Kinrade.

KATHERINE KINRADE

She was a poor ruin of a woman, belonging to Kirk Christ, but wandering like a vagrant over the island. The fact of first consequence is, that she was only half sane. In the language of the clergy of the time, she "had a degree of unsettledness and defect of understanding." Thus she was the sort of human wreck that the world finds it easy to fling away. Katherine fell victim to the sin that was not her own. A child was born. The Church censured her. She did penance in a white sheet at the church doors. But her poor, dull brain had no power to restrain her. A second child was born. Then the Bishop committed her for twenty-one days to his prison at the Peel. Let me tell you what the place is like. It is a crypt of the cathedral church. You enter it by a little door in the choir, leading to a tortuous flight of steep steps going down. It is a chamber cut out of the rock of the little island, dark, damp, and noisome. A small aperture lets in the light, as well as the sound of the sea beating on the rocks below. The roof, if you could see it in the gloom, is groined and ribbed, and above it is the mould of many graves, for in the old days bodies were buried in the choir. Can you imagine a prison more terrible for any prisoner, the strongest man or the bravest soldier? Think of it on a tempestuous night in winter. The lonely islet rock, with the swift seas rushing around it; the castle half a ruin, its guard-room empty, its banqueting hall roofless, its sally port silent; then the cathedral church falling to decay; and under the floor of its choir, where lie the graves of dead men, this black, grim, cold cell, silent as the graves themselves, save for the roar of the sea as it beats in the darkness on the rocks outside! But that is not enough. We have to think of this gloomy pile as inhabited on such a night of terrors by only one human soul--this poor, bedraggled, sin-laden woman with "the defect of understanding." Can anything be more awful? Yet there is worse to follow. The records tell us that Katherine Kinrade submitted to her punishment "with as much discretion as could be expected of the like of her." But such punishments do not cleanse the soul that is "drenched with unhallowed fire." Perhaps Katherine did not know that she was wronged; nevertheless God's image was being trodden out of her. She went from bad to worse, became a notorious strumpet, strolled about the island, and led "a scandalous life on other accounts." A third child was born. Then the Bishop concluded that for the honour of the Christian name, "to prevent her own utter destruction, and for the example of others," a timely and thorough reformation must be made by a further and severer punishment. It was the 15th day of March, and he ordered that on the 17th day, being the fair of St. Patrick, at the height of the market, the said Katherine Kinrade should be taken to Peel Town in charge of the general sumner, and the constables and soldiers of the garrison, and there dragged after a boat in the sea! Think of it! On a bitter day in March this wretched woman with the "defect of understanding" was to be dragged through the sea by a rope tied to the tail of a boat! And if any owner, master, and crew of any boat proved refractory by refusing to perform this service for the restraining of vice, they were to be subject to fine and imprisonment! When St. Patrick's Day came the weather was so stormy that no boat could live in the bay, but on St. Germain's Day, about the height of the market, the censure was performed. After undergoing the punishment the miserable soul was apparently penitent, "according to her capacity," took the communion, and was "received into the peace of the Church." Poor human ruin, defaced image of a woman, begrimed and buried soul, unchaste, misshapen, incorrigible, no "juice of God's distilling" ever "dropped into the core of her life," to such punishment she was doomed by the tribunal of that saintly man, Bishop Thomas Wilson! She has met him at another tribunal since then; not where she has crouched before him, but where she has stood by his side. She has carried her great account against him, to Him before whom the proudest are as chaff.

None spake when Wilson stood before
The Throne;
And He that sat thereon
Spake not; and all the presence-floor
Burnt deep with blushes, and the angels cast
Their faces downwards.--Then, at last,
Awe-stricken, he was ware
How on the emerald stair
A woman sat divinely clothed in white,
And at her knees four cherubs bright
That laid
Their heads within her lap. Then, trembling, he essayed
To speak--"Christ's mother, pity me!"
Then answered she,
"Sir, I am Katherine Kinrade." {*}

* Unpublished poem by the author of ''Fo'c's'le Yarns."

BISHOP WILSON'S LAST DAYS

Have I dashed your faith in my hero? Was he indeed the bitterest of tyrants as well as the serenest of saints? Yet bethink you of the other good men who have done evil deeds? King David and the wife of Uriah, Mahomet and his adopted son; the gallery of memory is hung round with many such portraits. Poor humanity, weak at the strongest, impure at the purest; best take it as it is, and be content. Remember that a good man's vices are generally the excess of his virtues. It was so with Bishop Wilson. Remember, too, that it is not for what a man does, but for what he means to do, that we love him or hate him in the end. And in the end the Manx people loved Bishop Wilson, and still they bless his memory.

We have a glimpse of his last days, and it is full of tender beauty. True to his lights, simple and frugal of life, God-fearing and strong of heart, he lived to be old. Very feeble, his beautiful face grown mellower even as his heart was softer for his many years, tottering on his staff, drooping like a white flower, he went in and out among his people, laying his trembling hands on the children's heads and blessing them, remembering their fathers and their fathers' fathers. Beloved by the young, reverenced by the old, honoured by the great, worshipped by the poor, living in sweet patience, ready to die in hope. His day was done, his night was near, and the weary toiler was willing to go to his rest. Thus passed some peaceful years. He died in 1755, and was followed to his grave by the whole Manx nation. His tomb is our most sacred shrine. We know his faults, but we do not speak of them there. Call a truce over the place of the old man's rest. There he lies, who was once the saviour of our people. God bless him! He was our fathers' bishop, and his saintly face still shines on our fathers' children.

THE ATHOL BISHOPS

Let me in a last clause attempt a sketch of the history of the Manx Church in the century or more that has followed Bishop Wilson's death. The last fifty years of it are featureless, save for an attempt to abolish the Bishopric. This foolish effort first succeeded and then failed, and was a poor bit of mummery altogether, ending in nothing but waste of money and time, and breath and temper. The fifty years immediately succeeding Bishop Wilson were full of activity. But so far as the Church was concerned, the activity was not always wholesome. If religion was kept alive in Man in those evil days, and the soul hunger of the poor Manx people was satisfied, it was not by the masters of the Manx Church, the Pharisees who gave alms in the streets to the sound of a trumpet going before them, or by the Levites who passed by on the other side when a man had fallen among thieves. It was partly by dissent, which was begun by Wesley in 1775 (after Quakerism had been suppressed), and partly by a small minority of the Manx clergy, who kept going the early evangelicalism of Newton and Cowper and Cecil--dear, sunny, simple-hearted old Manx vicars, who took sweet counsel together in their old-fashioned homes, where you found grace in all senses of the word, purity of soul, the life of the mind, and gentle courtliness of manners.

Bishop Wilson's successor was Doctor Mark Hildlesley, in all respects a worthy man. He completed the translation of the Scriptures into Manx, which had been begun by his predecessor, and established Sunday-schools in Man before they had been commenced in any other country. But after him came a line of worthless prelates, Dr. Richmond, remembered for his unbending haughtiness; Dr. Mason, disgraced by his debts; and Claudius Cregan, a bishop unfit to be a curate. Do you not read between the broad lines of such facts? The Athol dynasty was now some thirty years established in Man, and the swashbuckler Court of fine gentlemen was in full swing. In that costume drama of soiled lace and uproarious pleasures, what part did the Church play? Was it that of the man clad in camel's skin, living on locusts and wild honey, and calling on the generation of revellers to flee from the wrath to come? No; but that of the lover of cakes and ale. The records of this period are few and scanty, but they are full enough to show that some of the clergy of the Athols knew more of backgammon than of theology. While they pandered to the dissolute Court they lived under, going the errands of their masters in the State, fetching and carrying for them, and licking their shoes, they tyrannised over the poor ignorant Manx people and fleeced them unmercifully. Perhaps this was in a way only natural. Corruption was in the air throughout Europe. Dr. Youngs were grovelling for preferments at the feet of kings' mistresses, and Dr. Warners were kissing the shoebuckles of great ladies for sheer love of their faces, plastered red and white, The parasites of the Manx clergy were not far behind some of their English brethren. There is a story told of their life among themselves which casts lurid light on their character and ways of life. It is said that two of the Vicars-general summoned a large number of the Manx people to Bishop's Court on some business of the spiritual court, Many of the people had come long distances, chiefly a-foot, without food, and probably without money. After a short sitting the court was adjourned for dinner. The people had no dinner, and they starved. The Vicars-general went into the palace to dine with the Bishop. Some hours passed. The night was gathering. Then a message came out to say that no more business could be done that day. Some of the poor people were old, and had to travel fifteen miles to their homes. The record tells us that the Bishop gave his guests "most excellent wine." What of a scene like that? Outside, a sharp day in Spring, two score famished folks tramping the glen and the gravel-path, the gravel-path and the glen, to and fro, to and fro, minute after minute, hour after hour. Inside, my lord Bishop, drenched in debt, dining with his clergy, drinking "most excellent wine" with them, unbending his mighty mind with them, exchanging boisterous stories with them, jesting with them, laughing with them, until his face grows as red as the glowing turf on his hearth. Presently a footfall on the gravel, and outside the window a hungry, pinched, anxious face looking nervously into the room. Then this colloquy:

"Ah, the court, plague on't, I'd forgotten it."

"Adjourn it, gentlemen."

"Wine like yours, my lord, would make a man forget Paradise."

"Sit down again, gentlemen. Juan, go out and tell the people to come back to-morrow."

"Your right good health, my lord!"

"And yours, gentlemen both!"

Oh, if there is any truth in religion, if this world is God's, if a day is coming when the weak shall be exalted and the mighty laid low, what a reckoning they have gone to whose people cried for bread and they gave them a stone! And if there is not, if the hope is vain, if it is all a sham and a mockery, still the justice of this world is sure. Where are they now, these parasites? Their game is played out. They are bones and ashes; they are in their forgotten graves.

THE STORY OF THE MANX PEOPLE

THE MANX LANGUAGE

A friend asked me the other day if there was any reason why I should not deliver these lectures in Manx. I answered that there were just forty good and sufficient reasons. The first was that I did not speak Manx. Like the wise queen in the story of the bells, he then spared me the recital of the remaining nine-and-thirty. But there is at least one of the number that will appeal strongly to most of my hearers. What that is you shall judge for yourselves after I have braved the pitfalls of pronunciation in a tongue I do not know, and given you some clauses of the Lord's Prayer in Manx.

Ayr ain t'ayns niait,
(Father our who art in heaven.)

Caskerick dy row dty ennym.
(Holy be Thy name.)

Dy jig dty reeriaght.
(Come Thy kingdom.)

Dty aigney dy row jeant er y thalloo mry te ayns niau.
(Thy will be done on the earth even as in heaven.)

*****

Son dy bragh, as dy bragh, Amen.
(For ever and ever. Amen.)

I asked a friend--it was Mr. Wilson Barrett--if in its fulness, its fine chest-notes, its force and music, this old language did not sound like Italian.

"Well, no," he answered, "it sounds more like hard swearing."

I think you must now understand why the greater part of these lectures should be delivered in English.

Manx is a dialect mainly Celtic, and differing only slightly from the ancient Scottish Gaelic. I have heard my father say that when he was a boy in Ramsey, sixty years ago, a Scotch ship came ashore on the Carrick, and next morning after the wreck a long, lank, bony creature, with bare legs, and in short petticoats, came into the marketplace and played a tune on a little shrieking pair of smithy bellows, and then sang a song. It was a Highland piper, and he sang in his Gaelic, but the Manx boys and girls who gathered round him understood almost every word of his song, though they thought his pronunciation bad. Perhaps they took him for a poor old Manxman, somehow strayed and lost, a sort of Manx Rip Van Winkle who had slept a century in Scotland, and thereby lost part of his clothes.

You will wonder that there is not more Norse in our language, remembering how much of the Norse is in our blood. But the predominance of the Celtic is quite natural. Our mothers were Celts, speaking Celtic, before our Norse-fathers came. Was it likely that our Celtic mothers should learn much of the tongue of their Norse husbands? Then, is it not our mother, rather than our father, who teaches us to speak when we are children? So our Celtic mothers taught us Celtic, and thus Celtic became the dominant language of our race.

MANX NAMES

But though our Norse fathers could not impose their Norse tongue on their children, they gave them Norse names, and to the island they gave Norse place-names. Hence we find that though Manx names show a preponderance of the Celtic, yet that the Norse are numerous and important. Thus we have many _dales, fells, garths_, and _ghylls_. Indeed, we have many pure Scandinavian surnames and place-names. When I was in Iceland I sometimes found myself face to face with names which almost persuaded me that I was at home in our little island of the Irish Sea. There is, for example, a Snaefell in Man as well as in Iceland. Then, our Norwegian surnames often took Celtic prefixes, such as _Mac_, and thus became Scandio-Gaelic. But this is a subject on which I have no right to speak with authority. You will find it written down with learning and judgment in the good book of my friend Mr. A. W. Moore, of Cronkbourne. What concerns me more than the scientific aspect of the language is its literary character. I seem to realise that it was the language of a poetic race. The early generations of a people are often poetic. They are child-like, and to be like a child is the best half of being like a poet. They name their places by help of their observatory powers. These are fresh and full of wonder, and Nature herself is beautiful or strange until man tampers with her.

So when an untaught and uncorrupted mind looks upon a new scene and bethinks itself of a name to fit it, the name is almost certainly full of charm or rugged power. Thus we find in Man such mixed Norse and Celtic names as: _Booildooholly_ (Black fold of the wood), _Douglas_ (Black stream), _Soderick_ (South creek), _Trollaby_ (Troll's farm), _Gansy_ (Magic isle), _Cronk-y-Clagh Bane_ (Hill of the white stone), _Cronk-ny-hey_ (Hill of the grave), _Cronk-ny-arrey-lhaa_ (Hill of the day watch).

MANX IMAGINATION

This poetic character of the place-names of the island is a standing reproach to us as a race. We have degenerated in poetic spirit since such names were the natural expression of our feelings. I tremble to think what our place-names would be if we had to make them now. Our few modern Christenings set my teeth on edge. We are not a race of poets. We are the prosiest of the prosy. I have never in my life met with any race, except Icelanders and Norwegians, who are so completely the slave of hard fact. It is astounding how difficult the average Manxman finds it to put himself into the mood of the poet. That anything could come out of nothing, that there is such a thing as imagination, that any human brother of an honest man could say that a thing had been, which had not been, and yet not lie--these are bewildering difficulties to the modern Manxman. That a novel can be false and yet true--that, well that's foolishness. I wrote a Manx romance called "The Deemster;" and I did not expect my fellow-countrymen of the primitive kind to tolerate it for a moment. It was merely a fiction, and the true Manxman of the old sort only believes in what is true. He does not read very much, and when he does read it is not novels. But he could not keep his hands off this novel, and on the whole, and in the long run, he liked it--that is, as he would say, "middling," you know! But there was only one condition on which he could take it to his bosom--it must be true. There was the rub, for clearly it transgressed certain poor little facts that were patent to everybody.

Never mind, Hall Caine did not know poor Man, or somebody had told him wrong. But the story itself! The Bishop, Dan, Ewan, Mona, the body coming ashore at the Mooragh, the poor boy under the curse by the Calf, lord-a-massy, that was thrue as gospel! What do you think happened? I have got the letters by me, and can show them to anybody. A good Manxman wrote to remonstrate with me for calling the book a "romance." How dare I do so? It was all true. Another wrote saying that maybe I would like to know that in his youth he knew my poor hero, Dan Mylrea, well. They often drank together. In fact, they were the same as brothers. For his part he had often warned poor Dan the way he was going. After the murder, Dan came to him and gave him the knife with which he had killed Ewan. He had got it still!

Later than the "Deemster," I published another Manx romance, "The Bondman." In that book I mentioned, without thought of mischief, certain names that must have been lying at the back of my head since my boyhood. One of them becomes in the book the name of an old hypocrite who in the end cheats everybody and yet prays loudly in public. Now it seems that there is a man up in the mountains who owns that name. When he first encountered it in the newspapers, where the story was being published as a serial, he went about saying he was in the "Bondman," that it was all thrue as gospel, so it was, that he knew me when I was a boy, over Ramsey way, and used to give me rides on his donkey, so he did. This was before the hypocrite was unmasked; and when that catastrophe occurred, and his villany stood naked before all the island, his anger knew no limits. I am told that he goes about the mountains now like a thunder-cloud, and that he wants to meet me. I had never heard of the man before in all my life.

What I say is true only of the typical Manxman, the natural-man among Manxmen, not of the Manxman who is Manxman plus man of the world, the educated Manxman, who finds it as easy as anybody else to put himself into a position of sympathy with works of pure imagination. But you must go down to the turf if you want the true smell of the earth. Education levels all human types, as love is said to level all ranks; and to preserve your individuality and yet be educated seems to want a strain of genius, or else a touch of madness.

The Manx must have been the language of a people with few thoughts to express, but such thoughts as they had were beautiful in their simplicity and charm, sometimes wise and shrewd, and not rarely full of feeling. Thus _laa-noo_ is old Manx for child, and it means literally half saint--a sweet conception, which says the best of all that is contained in Wordsworth's wondrous "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality." _Laa-bee_ is old Manx for bed, literally half-meat, a profound commentary on the value of rest. The old salutation at the door of a Manx cottage before the visitor entered was this word spoken from the porch: _Vel peccaghs thie?_ Literally: Any sinner within? All humanity being sinners in the common speech of the Manx people.

MANX PROVERBS

Nearly akin to the language of a race are its proverbs, and some of the Manx proverbs are wise, witty, and racy of the soil. Many of them are the common possession of all peoples. Of such kind is "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." Here is one which sounds like an Eastern saying: "Learning is fine clothes for the rich man, and riches for the poor man." But I know of no foreign parentage for a proverb like this: "A green hill when far away; bare, bare when it is near."

That may be Eastern also. It hints of a long weary desert; no grass, no water, and then the cruel mirage that breaks down the heart of the wayfarer at last. On the other hand, it is not out of harmony with the landscape of Man, where the mountains look green sometimes from a distance when they are really bare and stark, and so typify that waste of heart when life is dry of the moisture of hope, and all the world is as a parched wilderness. However, there is one proverb which is so Manx in spirit that I could almost take oath on its paternity, so exactly does it fit the religious temper of our people, though it contains a word that must strike an English ear as irreverent: "When one poor man helps another poor man, God himself laughs."

MANX BALLADS

Next to the proverbs of a race its songs are the best expression of its spirit, and though Manx songs are few, some of them are full of Manx character. Always their best part is the air. A man called Barrow compiled the Manx tunes about the beginning of the century, but his book is scarce. In my ignorance of musical science I can only tell you how the little that is left of Manx music lives in the ear of a man who does not know one note from another. Much of it is like a wail of the wind in a lonely place near to the sea, sometimes like the soughing of the long grass, sometimes like the rain whipping the panes of a window as with rods. Nearly always long-drawn like a moan rarely various, never martial, never inspiriting, often sad and plaintive, as of a people kept under, but loving liberty, poor and low down, but with souls alive, looking for something, and hoping on,--full of the brine, the salt foam, the sad story of the sea. Nothing would give you a more vivid sense of the Manx people than some of our old airs. They would seem to take you into a little whitewashed cottage with sooty rafters and earthen floor, where an old man who looks half like a sailor and half like a landsman is dozing before a peat fire that is slumbering out. Have I in my musical benightedness conveyed an idea of anything musical? If not, let me, by the only vehicle natural to me, give you the rough-shod words of one or two of our old ballads. There is a ballad, much in favour, called _Ny kirree fo niaghey_, the Sheep under the Snow. Another, yet better known, is called _Myle Charaine_. This has sometimes been called the Manx National Air, but that is a fiction. The song has nothing to do with the Manx as a nation. Perhaps it is merely a story of a miser and his daughter's dowry. Or perhaps it tells of pillage, probably of wrecking, basely done, and of how the people cut the guilty one off from all intercourse with them.

O, Myle Charaine, where got you your gold?
Lone, lone, you have left me here,
O, not in the curragh, deep under the mould,
Lone, lone, and void of cheer.

This sounds poor enough, but it would be hard to say how deeply this ballad, wedded to its wailing music, touches and moves a Manxman. Even to my ear as I have heard it in Manx, it has seemed to be one of the weirdest things in old ballad literature, only to be matched by some of the old Irish songs, and by the gruesome ditty which tells how "the sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'."

MANX CAROLS

The paraphrase I have given you was done by George Borrow, who once visited the island. My friend the Rev. T. E. Brown met him and showed him several collections of Manx carols, and he pronounced them all translations from the English, not excepting our famous _Drogh Vraane_, or carol of every bad woman whose story is told in the Bible, beginning with the story of mother Eve herself. And, indeed, you will not be surprised that to the shores of our little island have drifted all kinds of miscellaneous rubbish, and that the Manxmen, from their very simplicity and ignorance of other literatures, have had no means of sifting the flotsam and assigning value to the constituents. Besides this, they are so irresponsible, have no literary conscience, and accordingly have appropriated anything and everything. This is true of some Manx ballads, and perhaps also of many Manx carols. The carols, called Carvals in Manx, serve in Man, as in other countries, the purpose of celebrating the birth of Jesus, but we have one ancient custom attached to them which we can certainly claim for our own, so Manx is it, so quaint, so grimly serious, and withal so howlingly ludicrous.

It is called the service of Oiel Verree, probably a corruption of _Feaill Vorrey_, literally the Feast of Mary, and it is held in the parish church near to midnight on Christmas Eve. Scott describes it in "Peveril of the Peak," but without personal knowledge.

Services are still held in many churches on Christmas Eve; and I think they are called Oiel Verree, but the true Oiel Verree, the real, pure, savage, ridiculous, sacrilegious old Oiel Verree, is gone. I myself just came in time for it; I saw the last of it, nevertheless I saw it at its prime, for I saw it when it was so strong that it could not live any longer. Let me tell you what it was.

The story carries me back to early boyish years, when, from the lonely school-house on the bleak top of Maughold Head, I was taken in secret, one Christmas Eve, between nine and ten o'clock, to the old church of Kirk Maughold, a parish which longer than any other upheld the rougher traditions. My companion was what is called an original. His name was Billy Corkill. We were great chums. I would be thirteen, he was about sixty. Billy lived alone in a little cottage on the high-road, and worked in the fields. He had only one coat all the years I knew him. It seemed to have been blue to begin with, but when it had got torn Billy had patched it with anything that was handy, from green cloth to red flannel. He called it his Joseph's coat of many colours. Billy was a poet and a musical composer. He could not read a word, but he would rather have died than confess his ignorance. He kept books and newspapers always about him, and when he read out of them, he usually held them upside down. If any one remarked on that, he said he could read them any way up--that was where his scholarship came in. Billy was a great carol singer. He did not know a note, but he never sang except from music. His tunes were wild harmonies that no human ear ever heard before. It will be clear to you that old Billy was a man of genius.

Such was my comrade on that Christmas Eve long ago. It had been a bitter winter in the Isle of Man, and the ground was covered with snow. But the church bells rang merrily over the dark moorland, for Oiel Verree was peculiarly the people's service, and the ringers were ringing in the one service of the year at which the parishioners supplanted the Vicar, and appropriated the old parish church. In spite of the weather, the church was crowded with a motley throng, chiefly of young folks, the young men being in the nave, and the girls (if I remember rightly) in the little loft at the west end. Most of the men carried tallow dips, tied about with bits of ribbon in the shape of rosettes, duly lighted, and guttering grease at intervals on to the book-ledge or the tawny fingers of them that held them. It appeared that there had been an ordinary service before we arrived, and the Vicar was still within the rails of the communion. From there he addressed some parting words of solemn warning to the noisy throng of candle-carriers. As nearly as I can remember, the address was this: "My good people, you are about to celebrate an old custom. For my part, I have no sympathy with such customs, but since the hearts of my parishioners seem to be set on this one, I have no wish to suppress it. But tumultuous and disgraceful scenes have occurred on similar occasions in previous years, and I beg you to remember that you are in God's house," &c. &c. The grave injunction was listened to in silence, and when it ended, the Vicar, a worthy but not very popular man, walked towards the vestry. To do so, he passed the pew where I sat under the left arm of my companion, and he stopped before him, for Billy had long been a notorious transgressor at Oiel Verree.

"See that you do not disgrace my church to-night," said the Vicar. But Billy had a biting tongue.

"Aw, well," said he, "I'm thinking the church is the people's."

"The people are as ignorant as goats," said the Vicar.

"Aw, then," said Billy, "you are the shepherd, so just make sheeps of them."

At that the Vicar gave us the light of his countenance no more. The last glimpse of his robe going through the vestry door was the signal for a buzz of low gossip, and straightway the business of Oiel Verree began.

It must have been now approaching eleven o'clock, and two old greybeards with tousled heads placed themselves abreast at the door of the west porch. There they struck up a carol in a somewhat lofty key. It was a most doleful ditty. Certainly I have never since heard the like of it. I remember that it told the story of the Crucifixion in startling language, full of realism that must have been horribly ghastly, if it had not been so comic. At the end of each verse the singers made one stride towards the communion. There were some thirty verses, and every mortal verse did these zealous carollers give us. They came to an end at length, and then another old fellow rose in his pew and sang a ditty in Manx. It told of the loss of the herring-fleet in Douglas Bay in the last century. After that there was yet another and another carol--some that might be called sacred, others that would not be badly wronged with the name of profane. As I recall them now, they were full of a burning earnestness, and pictured the dangers of the sinner and the punishment of the damned. They said nothing about the joys of heaven, or the pleasures of life. Wherever these old songs came from they must have dated from some period of religious revival. The Manxman may have appropriated them, but if he did so he was in a deadly earnest mood. It must have been like stealing a hat-band.

My comrade had been silent all this time, but in response to various winks, nods, and nudges, he rose to his feet. Now, in prospect of Oiel Verree I had written the old man a brand new carol. It was a mighty achievement in the sentimental vein. I can remember only one of its couplets:

Hold your souls in still communion,
Blend them in a holy union.

I am not very sure what this may mean, and Billy must have been in the same uncertainty. Shall I ever forget what happened? Billy standing in the pew with my paper in his hand the wrong way up. Myself by his side holding a candle to him. Then he began to sing. It was an awful tune--I think he called it sevens--but he made common-sense of my doggerel by one alarming emendation. When he came to the couplet I have given you, what do you think he sang?

"Hold your souls in still communion,
Blend them in--a hollow onion!"

Billy must have been a humorist. He is long dead, poor old Billy. God rest him!

DECAY OF THE MANX LANGUAGE

If in this unscientific way I have conveyed my idea of Manx carvals, Manx ballads, or Manx proverbs, you will not be surprised to hear me say that I do not think that any of these, can live long apart from the Manx language. We may have stolen most of them; they may have been wrecked on our coast, and we may have smuggled them; but as long as they wear our native homespun clothes they are ours, and as soon as they put it off they cease to belong to us. A Manx proverb is no longer a Manx proverb when it is in English. The same is true of a Manx ballad translated, and of a Manx carval turned into an English carol. What belongs to us, our way of saying things, in a word, our style, is gone. The spirit is departed, and that which remains is only an English ghost flitting about in Manx grave-clothes.

Now this is a sad fact, for it implies that little as we have got of Manx literature, whether written or oral, we shall soon have none at all. Our Manx language is fast dying out. If we had any great work in the Manx tongue, that work alone would serve to give our language a literary life at least. But we have no such great work, no fine Manx poem, no good novel in Manx, not even a Manx sermon of high mark. Thus far our Manx language has kept alive our pigmies of Manx literature; but both are going down together. The Manx is not much spoken now. In the remoter villages, like Cregnesh, Ballaugh, Kirk Michael, and Kirk Andreas, it may still be heard. Moreover, the Manxman may hear Manx a hundred times for every time an Englishman hears it. But the younger generation of Manx folk do not speak Manx, and very often do not understand it. This is a rapid change on the condition of things in my own boyhood. Manx is to me, for all practical uses, an unknown tongue. I cannot speak it, I cannot follow it when spoken, I have only a sort of nodding acquaintance with it out of door, and yet among my earliest recollections is that of a household where nothing but Manx was ever spoken except to me. A very old woman, almost bent double over a spinning wheel, and calling me Hommy-Veg, and _baugh-millish_, and so forth. This will suggest that the Manx people are themselves responsible for the death of the Manx language. That is partly true. The Manx tongue was felt to be an impediment to intercourse with the English people. Then the great English immigration set in, and the Isle of Man became a holiday resort. That was the doomster of the Manx language. In another five-and-twenty years the Manx language will be as dead as a Manx herring.

One cannot but regret this certain fate. I dare not say that the language itself is so good that it ought to live. Those who know it better say that "it's a fine old tongue, rich and musical, full of meaning and expression." {*} I know that it is at least forcible, and loud and deep in sound. I will engage two Manxmen quarrelling in Manx to make more noise in a given time than any other two human brethren in Christendom, not excepting two Irishmen. Also I think the Manx must be capable of notes of sweet feeling, and I observe that a certain higher lilt in a Manx woman's voice, suggesting the effort to speak about the sound of the sea, and the whistle of the wind in the gorse, is lost in the voices of the younger women who speak English only. But apart from tangible loss, I regret the death of the Manx tongue on grounds of sentiment. In this old tongue our fathers played as children, bought and sold as men, prayed, preached, gossiped, quarrelled, and made love. It was their language at Tynwald; they sang their grim carvals in it, and their wailing, woful ballads.

* The Rev. T. E. Brown.

When it is dead more than half of all that makes us Manxmen will be gone. Our individuality will be lost, the greater barrier that separates us from other peoples will be broken down. Perhaps this may have its advantages, but surely it is not altogether a base desire not to be submerged into all the races of the earth. The tower of Babel is built, the tongues of the builders are confounded, and we are not all anxious to go back and join the happy family that lived in one ark.

But aside from all lighter thoughts there is something very moving and pathetic in the death of an old language. Permit me to tell you, not as a philologist, a character to which I have no claim, but as an imaginative writer, how the death of an ancient tongue affects me. It is unlike any other form of death, for an unwritten language is even as a breath of air which when it is spent leaves no trace behind. A nation may die, yet its history remains, and that is the tangible part of its past. A city may fall to decay and lie a thousand years under the sands of the desert, yet its relics revivify its life. But a language that is dead, a tongue that has no life in its literature, is a breath of wind that is gone. A little while and it went from lip to lip, from lip to ear; it came we know not whence; it has passed we know not where. It was an embodied spirit of all man's joys and sorrows, and like a spirit it has vanished away.

Then if this old language has been that of our own people its death is a loss to our affections. Indeed, language gets so close to our heart that we can hardly separate it from our emotions. If you do not speak the Italian language, ask yourself whether Dante comes as close to you as Shakespeare, all questions of genius and temperament apart. And if Dante seems a thousand miles away, and Shakespeare enters into your closest chamber, is it not first of all because the language of Shakespeare is your own language, alive with the life that is in your own tongue, vital with your own ways of thought and even tricks and whims of speech? Let English die, and Shakespeare goes out of your closet, and passes away from you, and is then your brother-Englishman only in name. So close is the bond of language, so sweet and so mysterious.